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Veteran teacher David Kersey h '98 writes an electronic column called "As I See It." This column was reprinted from the February 2010 issue.
“Academically Able Athletes Authenticate their Acumen by Analyzing Analogies and All Aspects of Accurate Answers against Sagacious Sensible Students who Seriously Solve and Synthesize Superlative and Scientific Speculations.” Do you remember this string of A-words and Swords? Do you? Can you hear the voice? Remember the scene? Yes, of course, you can. Yes, it’s John Pariseau’s voice. And yes, it’s the opening to the School’s annual Academic Bowl. You will also remember that it starts with a seatlifting blast of Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (Okay, the theme from Kubrick’s 2001, A Space Odyssey), and a light show that rivals the home-court introduction of the New York Knickerbockers. And later on you would certainly recognize the ancient blue and yellow police lights of the “buzzer round.” And yes, there’s tinsel, lots and lots of silver tinsel. As you know, Mr. Pariseau stepped down as Associate Head of the School last June, and yet there he was two Mondays ago playing to a standing-room-only crowd in the new Assembly Hall very much in charge of things and firing questions – he has hundreds – at teams of “Allens” and “Stevensons” who flanked him left and right. It was Academic Bowl XL, which means that he’s been running this show since 1971, his first year at the School. John tells me he will be back on the podium next January, but after that he’s not sure. I hope he keeps doing it. What fun it is for all the rest of us, for the boys, for faculty (Jim Holt comes back every year to keep score) and staff, for parents, for alumni, how it brightens our long, dark January days. And how the irrepressible Mr. Pariseau relishes the whole affair! After the show, Roger Raines ’80, who never misses an Academic Bowl, was greeted by Mr. Pariseau with a big smile and an arm raised high to show Roger that he had not forgotten Roger's favorite question: “With which arm does Lady Liberty lift her lamp?” (Everyone knows that.)
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There were several other alumni in attendance – faculty members Randy Schrade ’76 and Jaison Correa-Spain ’97, in charge of generating the new high-tech audio and visual questions, Alex Klebanoff ’98, who is interning in the art department, and Jim Seligman ’73 and Shuui Hosoi ’87, whose sons Jad Seligman ’12 and Sota Hosoi ’11 were on the winning Allens team. Jimmy Seligman remembered that he was in the Academic Bowl back in 1973 - Academic Bowl II that would have been. Perhaps you were up there in the lights once yourself, with the whole school watching, as Mr. Pariseau tested your mettle - maybe you were an Academically Able Allen or perhaps a Sagacious and Sensible Stevenson. Or maybe you were like me, trying to keep up with the breakneck pace of things: “How many numbers from the hour hand of a clock are not perfect squares?” And the final question this year: “Name the A-S Headmaster who kept the School open after the blizzard of ’78 crippled NYC.” The boys got them both. Alex Klebanoff is not alone in returning to the School this winter. Laurence Smith ’00 (Yes, the last of the Smith Brothers) is also interested in teaching and has been following me around. He’s in his last year at Baruch College and hopes to be teaching history in one of the junior boarding schools next year. Daniel Demarse ’05 is helping out in the theater, with “Twelfth Night” last fall and now with “Pirates of Penzance”. They seem excited to be back at the School and I think the faculty delights in working with them. I certainly do. At lunch today I asked Klebbie how things were going in the art room and though he was amused by the irony of his situation, he seemed entirely undone by his encounter with the Sixth Grade that morning. “They’re a rowdy bunch,” he said. “They call me Special K.” I told him that Laurence was going to take up the Treaty of Versailles with the Seventh Grade next week; then I went back to the salad bar in search of more Israeli couscous. Last Tuesday evening I was at the Father and Son Dinner. You’ll remember those occasions were once held in the old gym under the basketball nets. They are now in the Assembly Hall, transformed by lighting and decorative touches into an elegant dining space. Gone are the brandy and cigars, but it is still largely an all-male affair that is unfailingly sentimentally affecting: fathers and
sons easy in their talk and at home in the company of other fathers and sons. The Lower School Father and Son Breakfast is another such event. I went looking for father-son strife the other morning, a little drama to intensify the day, only to find sunshine and delight. When I asked five former students, now upright fathers, if they expected worse to come, they all five looked at me uncomprehendingly as if their future was now – is now – and the possibility of struggling with their sons had not occurred to them. “My son is very happy at school and I am happy with him, for him!” The father-son events at every level bring out the best in every man; maybe that is one of the charms, the gifts of attending an all-male school—that and the satisfying continuity experienced by the institution’s creaking teachers, by Mr. Pariseau, for instance, by me, to see the boy you taught in 1970 now the father of a boy in the class of 2017, a boy you might teach. The first week back from school was befitting an old-fashioned January - cold, frigid, snowless. Such days with or without snow are my favorite for the parade of boys, miniature Michelin men, packed in snowsuits as for an Everest expedition, on their way—their laborious way—up the west stairs, four flights up, eighty steps to be exact, to the roof. I like to ask them, “Where are you going?” “To the roof,” one of the boys said, “are we there yet?” Seven years from now some of these inflated boys will be a part of the Academic Bowl, by which time they should know, as every New York boy knows: it’s with the right arm Lady Liberty lifts the torch. Before I close I want to remind you about the year’s alumni event on March 13. In addition to recognizing milestones reached by reunion classes, including several class parties, the alumni are also celebrating the role music has in the School over the years. We have invited all of the School’s music teachers, past and present, including Stanley Gauger and Rolande Schrade. There will also be some performances by the current boys, and a rollicking sing-along with a guest Pirate King, Tristan Howard ’96. I hope to see you there. If you are an alumnus and would like to receive Mr. Kersey’s column, please send your email address to Monique Lowitt, mlowitt@allen-stevenson.org and write "Subscribe to 'As I See It'" in the subject line.